Un acte d'amour

Although a co-production ,although it has a French title and features plenty of French luminaries,the film fell into oblivion in France.It's barely mentioned in the dictionaries of movies .

It was Anatole Litvak's return to France,where he had made some of his thirties movies ("L'Equipage" ,definitely a movie to rediscover, "Mayerling" the remake of which was filmed by Terence Young in 1968 or "Coeur de Lilas").But although I expected much of this film,I must admit I was disappointed.Particularly after watching his absorbing "decision before dawn" ,the movie he made just before "Un Acte d'Amour" The main problem is language:it's not very smart to make the French speak English between them.It's not a problem for a foreign audience,but for the French one it is one: Dany Robin and Serge Reggiani speaking English together is downright embarrassing.Not that their English is bad,but it is impossible to believe in THAT Paris,where almost everybody ,from a humble waitress to the hookers,speaks fluent English .And why didn't Litvak use Douglas' linguistic abilities?I once saw an interview during the Festival de Cannes and his French was quite good.

The French outnumber their American co-stars:Fernand Ledoux,Gabrielle Dorziat (whom Litvak had already directed in 'Mayerling" where she was miscast as Elizabeth "Sissi" from Austria),Dany Robin (who would be part of Hitchcock's "Topaz") ,the highly superior Reggiani (whose English delivery is much faster than when he speaks French: one should note he never says a single word in his first language,which is unlikely),and Brigitte Bardot (wearing braids) who appears in two short sequences as a waitress .

The best of this mushy story (the scene in the prison with a ridiculous voice over takes the biscuit when the young pure heroine winds up in the lions den (that is to say a cell with prostitutes)takes place in the prologue and in the epilogue :Douglas comes back to a place his love was happy when she was sixteen on the Cote d'Azur and he remembers her words .The meeting with his former superior and his wife,the room where the soldier feels nostalgic for a time that never was ,all this has Sirk accents and makes me feel the movie could have easily been boiled down into a good short.

More than any other movie I've seen, this one draws a dark picture of what the statistical enormity and bureaucratic obscenity of WWII did to individuals during (and after) the Second World War. This is a love story set against the new way of dealing with the logistics of millions of people on the move in wartime Europe -- on either side. The big point is that it's difficult to draw a line between the sides in the brutal impersonality of the events that crush people like the characters in this story.

Kirk Douglas is great, of course, and the direction in the film is always intersting. Hard to believe this was made as late as 53.

See this if you can -- I saw it on TCM recently in a Kirk Douglas festival. For that matter, watch all the Kirk Douglas flicks you can -- the guy had either great taste or great luck.

I am amazed, and wonder why this movie is unavailable. I would love to get a copy, in any format, as I would be happy to see it over and over. I have not felt this way about many movie in my life. Over the years I have looked for it but always forgot the correct name. It did make a lasting impression on me as a young man.Does anyone know if this movie will become available soon? As the movie ends I wondered what would become of Teller, how would he move on? The poignancy of his dilemma has always come into my mind with a reading of Shakespeare's sonnets. Especially: How heavy do journey on the way When what I seek, my weary travel's end, Doth teach that ease and that repose to say," Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend." The beast that bears me,tired with my woe Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me, As if by some instinct the wretch did know His rider loved not speed, being made from thee. The bloody spur cannot provoke him on, That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide, Which heavily he answers with a groan, More sharp to me than spurring to his side; For that same groan doth put this in my mind My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

That is how Teller must have felt as he was shipped out to separate him from his love. His return to France after the war, his encounter with the officer who thought he had done him a favor,the wallpaper; all heartbreaking. Do not miss this movie- it can change one's life.

As I said above, I cannot understand why this movie languishes in obscurity and wonder if anyone can provide an answer. I can only imagine some contractual problem must exist that does not allow this movies to be mass marketed like many of the other Kirk Douglas masterpieces.

How truly odd it is that so little attention to this film is evident in these archives. Apart from some quibbles one might have with its casting, the occasionally stilted dialogue, or some melodramatic nonsense here and there, it really is an important addition to the Kirk Douglas oeuvre as well as a story about a character very much like those he played later in "Paths of Glory" and "Lonely Are the Brave."

Douglas must have had more than a passing hand in choosing roles for himself during his career. Unlike many of his contemporaries (Brando comes to mind), he has played characters that require a fine balance between kinetic displays of a true hero and moments of self-effacing and troubled doubt. It is not so much the quality of the writing at work here as it is his own deliberate and skillful willingness to interpret the role honestly, without regard to any supposed preconceptions of what his audience expects of him.

I write this with a degree of reservation, because I never much cared for his voice or his looks. The fact that I admire his acting skill is perhaps all the more enhanced by this admission, however. With a profile a little less vivid and a better vocal range and timbre, he might have played Shakespeare.

His French colleagues in the present effort are more stereotypical than one cares for. They are made to speak a kind of pidgin English that was generally thought acceptable in 1953 for American audiences. Subtitles accompanying actual French would be requisite for any remake.

Moreover, there is that recurrent tinge of sentimentality and bathos. But I still liked it on the whole, giving it a solid 7 out of 10.

A low-key film with a fine cast. Unfortunately, it's so low-key as to seem nearly aimless for the first half. The pace and interest do pick up, however, toward the end.

As World war II grinds slowly to a halt in Europe, an innocent French girl on the brink of prostitution and a cynical but lonely GI fall in love in the City of Lights - where, due to the war, the lights don't always work, A flaw, at least as the film plays on television, is that the French accents are sometimes hard to understand. And there are plenty of them.

Though ten years too old for the role, not unusual for actors in war movies before the '70s, Douglas turns in a solid performance as Pfc. Teller, the wounded American soldier now stationed at an army headquarters in Paris. But it is the lovely Dany Robin, rarely seen in America, who deserves most of the acting credit for keeping the rather unfocused story interesting. Fernand Ledoux is adequately brooding and resentful. The eighteen-year-old Brigitte Bardot is already beautiful, but look sharp or you may miss her.

The real scene-stealer here, though, is the slinky Barbara Laage, who shows herself to be a fine actress in very nearly her only American film. Too bad she breezes out of the picture a third of the way through.

The on-location shots of Paris are also a plus in a film that sometimes flirts dangerously with soap opera. Not a classic or even a forgotten classic, but worth your time if bittersweet love is your cup of tea.